As the saga of the House Speaker's race continues, it's obvious that this Republican House majority is more dysfunctional than at any time in history. This week was supposed to yield a new crop of candidates, among them at least one or two who could bring about a consensus among the moderates (sic) who hail from Biden districts, the institutionalists who allegedly care about maintaining the U.S. system of government and the nihilists who just want to blow everything up. It's not going well.
There have been a number of shifting demands from these various factions but we now know that the one inviolate criterion is that any new speaker must be an election denier. On Tuesday, their leader Donald Trump made it very clear that he will not allow anyone who has ever crossed him in that way to have the gavel. So when Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who voted to certify the election on January 6, was nominated for the job, Trump trashed him on Truth Social for failing to understand "the Power of the Trump Endorsement." He then reportedly got on the phone with members to make his wishes known. Within the hour Trump reportedly told a confidante of Emmer, “he’s done. It’s over. I killed him.”
It's tempting to see this as a simple Trump ego power play. Emmer didn't kowtow to the Big Lie so he wanted revenge and he got it. I'm sure that's a big part of his motivation for interfering that way. After all, what difference can it really make to him who is the Speaker of the House in this Congress? Well, if you think about it, it might make a very big difference. If he decides to once again contest the election results if he doesn't win, having a puppet in the job could be very helpful to his plans to attempt another coup. Does anyone think he wouldn't try it?
Obviously, he wouldn't have the same levers of power that he had as president in 2020 to do things like attempt to enlist the Justice Department (DOJ) in his scheme. But that was actually a small part of the plot and it failed anyway. Most of what they did was an outside game, with the Team Crazy lawyers taking the lead along with attempts to coerce state and local election officials to rig the election after the fact. But it also required the cooperation and participation of "the Republican congressmen" who Trump referred to as his accomplices when pressuring DOJ officials. Many of them were aware of the "fake elector" plot and were more than prepared to step up if Vice President Mike Pence had done his part to usurp the Constitution.
It may sound crazy that Trump would even attempt such a thing again considering all the legal jeopardy he's facing in both federal and state court for what he did last time. But that's exactly why he is most likely to try it again. It's the one sure thing he can count on as a get-out-of-jail-free card. (And yes, if he's found guilty in the Georgia case and he finds his way back to the White House anyway, I'm sure he believes there's no reasonable enforcement method. Are they going to send the Fulton County sheriff to the White House to bring him to jail? Would the Secret Service let them do it?)
Luckily for Trump, there's an outside group that's determined to help him do it this time and they've got a serious plan.
The centrist think tank Third Way has been warning the public about their erstwhile allies No Labels for a while now. (It's a sign of the times that such a split would happen between two groups allegedly representing the "center.") Now they're sounding a deafening alarm.
We've known for a while that No Labels has been planning to run an independent candidate which they have assured everyone they would only do if it would not play spoiler and elect Donald Trump. Such assurances have always been empty since their pollster Mark Penn (who is married to Nancy Jacobson, the leader of the organization) has been MAGA-friendly for years. Third Way's new memo explains their change of plans:
Since they launched their third-party presidential effort last year, the No Labels Party has repeated a central refrain: “our bipartisan ticket, led either by a Democrat or a Republican, will not be a spoiler — we are in this to win.” But that has now changed. No Labels has made clear that their new plan is to put a Republican at the top of their ticket. And because they can’t win the presidency outright, they’ve indicated that their intention now is to exercise leverage over the winner by denying both major parties 270 Electoral College Votes (ECVs). That radical new plan would ensure a second Trump term.
No Labels' spin is that by putting a Republican on the top of the ticket they will be denying Trump a victory — but that's not true. In fact, the whole thing is much more likely to deliver him back to the White House. Their own polling shows that this No Labels ticket could result in denying either party the required 270 electoral votes they need. And we know what that means:
None of this is speculation. No Labels put out a chart based on their new polling that shows their candidate (from either party) can’t win …
Their chief strategist has said publicly they are preparing for a contingent election in which they try to win a few states and deny Trump and Biden 270 electoral votes. This, No Labels believes, would give them leverage to cut a deal by promising their electors’ support to whichever major party candidate they deem more worthy.
It's very special that No Labels believes it can or should "cut a deal" to install the next president without winning a majority of electoral votes. Apparently, Donald Trump has convinced these supposedly principled centrists that corrupting the election even more than he did is perfectly respectable.
But that's not what would happen in this situation anyway. They would have to somehow coerce electors into voting their way which isn't likely so the actual outcome would be that no party reaches the 270-vote threshold and it goes to the House of Representatives where the party that has the most delegations decides. Guess which party has more delegations? The Republicans, all of whom would be ecstatic to have the chance to steal the election for Donald Trump.
If you think this House speaker election is a three-ring circus, this would be a nuclear meltdown. But I have to say it's very fitting that a supercilious centrist group like No Labels would deliver the death blow to American democracy. I'm sure they'll find a way to blame the Democratic hippies for it anyway.
